VII


Such things do not really matter; the guide-book's object of interest is
seldom an object of human interest; you may miss it or ignore it without
real personal loss; but if we had failed of that mystic progress of the
silver car down the nave of San Pablo we should have been really if not
sensibly poorer. So we should if we had failed of the charming
experience which awaited us in our hotel at lunch-time. When we went out
in the morning we saw a table spread the length of the long dining-room,
and now when we returned we found every chair taken. At once we surmised
a wedding breakfast, not more from the gaiety than the gravity of the
guests; and the head waiter confirmed our impression: it was indeed a
_boda._ The party was just breaking up, and as we sat down at our table
the wedding guests rose from theirs. I do not know but in any country
the women on such an occasion would look more adequate to it than the
men; at any rate, there in Spain they looked altogether superior. It was
not only that they were handsomer and better dressed, but that they
expressed finer social and intellectual quality.

All the faces had the quiet which the Spanish face has in such degree
that the quiet seems national more than personal; but the women's faces
were oval, though rather heavily based, while the men's were squared,
with high cheek-bones, and they seemed more distinctly middle class. Men
and women had equally repose of manner, and when the women came to put
on their headgear near our corner, it was with a surface calm unbroken
by what must have been their inner excitement. They wore hats and
mantillas in about the same proportion; but the bride wore a black